Category Archives: future

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"On the online paywall debate, [Future CEO Stevie] Spring said that Future has found that different strategies work well in different markets. She said that brands such as Tech Radar were doing well with a free to air policy while other sites were making money from selling content online."

Steve Outing: "A profound moment of disappointment — when I think my mind finally lost the last tiny shread of hope for the newspaper industry — was this summer, when during a reinveinting-news conference I had a few minutes for a private conversation with the CEO of one of the largest U.S. newspaper companies. He told me that his firm’s intention of putting up pay-walls at most of its newspaper websites was meant primarily as a strategy to drive more print revenues. He said he didn’t expect to earn much from the web side with the pay-wall strategy."

"Society doesn’t need newspapers. What we need is journalism. For a century, the imperatives to strengthen journalism and to strengthen newspapers have been so tightly wound as to be indistinguishable. That’s been a fine accident to have, but when that accident stops, as it is stopping before our eyes, we’re going to need lots of other ways to strengthen journalism instead."

"CNN is courting newspapers -- and possibly competing with The Associated Press -- with a new wire service the cable network plans to launch soon, with plans for an all-expenses-paid, three-day summit in December to show off its news gathering capabilities."

"Top executives and editors from several major dailies in the Northeast, dissatisfied with The Associated Press, met recently to discuss the formation of a content-sharing agreement that in several cases would serve in place of their AP agreements, E&P has learned from top executives at three of the papers."

"But the reality is in some ways less bleak than the latest [circulation] numbers indicate: Some newspapers have raised newsstand prices, curtailed discounted copies and halted delivery to the least profitable customers. Also, while print circulation has been declining for years as readers continue their mass migration to the Web, many publishers point out they are reaching more readers than before through print and online."

Arthur Sulzberger Jr: "Embracing the hyperlink ethos of the Web to a degree not seen before, news organizations are becoming more comfortable linking to competitors acting in effect like aggregators. Fundamentally we are addressing a common desire for comprehensiveness. The desire of people to find the news and information that they want from their most trusted sources. The era of the walled garden is over."

"To date, most publishers have elected to buttress their profitability as much as possible by attacking the two most elastic expense categories: staffing and paper consumption. But this short-sighted effort may be compromising the quality of the core product to such a degree that it actually may speed the decline of the industry as publishers attempt to transition to a new, more sustainable business model – assuming one is out there."

Peter Preston: "Sometimes, amid encircling gloom, it's wise to set benchmarks longer than a week last Friday. Always, there are choices to be made - or not made. And usually (perhaps, maybe) innovation is its own reward. A Times drop of under 20,000 in five years isn't systemic collapse. A Guardian surge online that brings in more than 23 million unique users a month on top of a million-plus print readers isn't carnage."

FT editor Lionel Barber on the state of newspapers in the US: "[I]t seems undeniable that 2008 – and the coverage of the presidential election – will be seen as a tipping point in American journalism. The imperial status of the mainstream media – the television networks, big metropolitan dailies and lofty commentators – has been shaken. The lay-offs of hundreds of US newspaper journalists are a symptom of a wider malaise. We are witnessing a shift in the balance of power towards new media, with wholesale repercussions for the practice of journalism."

Mario Garcia: "We have often mentioned in this blog that we believe the printed newspaper of the future will be published less often than daily ... We have also heralded the rapid growth of free newspapers worldwide ... Of course, a strong online edition is a vital requirement. The newspaper of the future—elite or free—is simply a companion to a robust and newsy online edition."

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Martin Stabe is a journalist based in London. He is an interactive producer at the Financial Times, primarily working on developing the databases underlying FT.com’s interactive graphics and the FT data blog. This is a personal site, and nothing here reflects the views of the FT.